Clear night at last and finally a chance to get the new scope out. My clock drive arrived yesterday morning so i was even set up for tracking.

My first task was to check the collimation which had drifted slightly but was still good. A little tweak.

I then used Venus to align my finderscope. Rather frustratedly I couldn't get it in sight in the scope and the finder was out of focus.

A quick search on the grail of knowledge SGL revealed how to focus the finder ...wow. I then continued my mission for finder alignment. After casting around a bit i finally spoted venus and managed to get then aligned. Just as i was starting to worry too.

Again WOW. I dont know if it was a good night for it or if the optics made a difference the the phase was absolutely obvios and the view was my bet of venues ever. Considering how low to the horizen it was (i was actually looking THROUGH leaves) this was a great surprise and very welcome. My one concern was that the focus is quite high. Perhaps i will drop the primary a bit but it only really affected my 10mm ep with the 2X barlow on and this was solved by pulling it from the focuser a bit.

I was then kicking my heels for the next task which was to polar align ( not truly necessary I expect but I think a very important skill to have). Once polaris was visible it took some tweaking to get the polar scope in the right direction (including some tripod shifting (and its heavy)) but once the elevation and azimuth had been tweaked it was bang in the reticle. I had heard mention that a RA spin should keep it on the line. This was done and it was spot on so I was well pleased :D

Onto task 2 which was setting circles. ARRRGGGGH. I finally sussed the declination setting after some very odd slews but i really couldnt get the hang of RA what particulary threw me was how to read it when the scope was on the other side of the mount looking back? Any tips?

It was then playtime and i strolled through a sea full of stars with a stupid grin on my face. Tube rotation was a pain but i dealt with i and ditto the need for a step as I am rather short. the zenith was a real stretch.

So it was time to see what it could do....

Then i realized i really did need to learn the sky. S at N mage helped me to locate a few things i knew and I also used stellarium to find some more. The benefits of patio doors and a sleepy wife are great for night vision!

Using some hunting, lots of hunting I finally found M57 in lyra. The difference between 5 and 8" apertures then was obvious as the ring was a stunning sight, like a donut hanging in the air! I too the mag up and tested the tracking which was admirably great compensating perfectly for the drift.

My second target of the night was M51 which i had always failed to see with the goto. I worked out that it was on the same (nearly) RA as Mizar so a declination from that target should bag it.

Mizar! Mizar was a surpise with my scope splitting the mizar / alcor binary in the finderscope. I was surprised to notice that mizar itself was also a double so lost some time watching that before I remembered my mission.

The declination plan didn't work so I tried the circles again and was surprised when the worked. M51 was faint but undeniably there with its little buddy. Chalk up another M of the list.

By then it was 130. As in a few days i have to be up at 5 for work and i need to swing the body clock around (yeah right) I decided to call it a night...after another

stroll on the star studded carpet.

My next job i guess is a nice astro book. Perhaps it is time for "Turn left at Orion"?